Blogging at Female-Friendly Companies

As someone who is interested in encouraging women to succeed in technical fields, I believe that an important part of that task is the support of the workplace. This is an important issue for any employee, but it is crucial for working mothers. The magazine Working Mother performs a survey each year and ranks companies according to their support of working parents. Let’s look at the corporate blogs of two of those companies, Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline. Both of these companies are in Pharmaceuticals, which is a major business in New Jersey.

Johnson & Johnson has a corporate blog called JNJ BTW. As they so adeptly put it in their About JNJ BTW page, “Everyone else is talking about our company, so why can’t we?” The page’s author, Marc Monseau, explains that through the blog, he hopes to “find a voice that often gets lost in formal communications.” While he mentions the fact that there will be issues that can’t be discussed in the blog, he says that they will do what they can to “talk openly, directly and to the best of our knowledge.” Obviously, the Johnson & Johnson blog writers are writing not just for fellow employees but for us, the consumer masses.

Most of the entries on the Johnson & Johnson blog are not too intimidating – they are a single screen or less in length. Some are more formal in their writing styles, and some are more casual and conversational. Each entry allows blog readers to post comments with a simple click, although many of the recent postings don't have any comments. While some postings are text-based, many entries use YouTube videos and images to supplement the postings.

In general, the Johnson & Johnson blog presents a very professional, corporate image to us as its readers. The colors used in the blog are muted natural colors (greens and browns with use of red for text), and the visual on the blog page is an open medicine cabinet filled with Johnson & Johnson products and other health related items.

Despite the fact that some of the entries are written in a very informal style, the entire site exudes an atmosphere of professionalism, knowledge and experience. Which is just what you want to see from a company that provides products ranging from Clean & Clear to Concerta.

GlaxoSmithKline’s corporate blog is called More Than Medicine. According to their About This Blog page, their intended audience is any US resident, and their goal is to discuss “a range of topics related to the US healthcare system and how it can be improved.” That’s a pretty broad topic – much broader than Johnson & Johnson’s goal of talking about their company and its products. And the website is true to its word – categories include Chronic Diseases and Healthcare Reform.

Most entries in the GlaxoSmithKline blog are less than one screen in length, and the tone varies from conversational to somewhat formal, depending on the poster and the topic. Although comments are welcomed, many posts don’t have any comments, although there is a section on the page that highlights Recent Comments so that you can quickly scan them and read the ones of interest to you.

The visual design of GlaxoSmithKline’s blog portrays a more fun and informal feel than that of Johnson & Johnson’s blog because of their use of bright colors and bold headings.

However, the posts on the GlaxoSmithKline blog tend to be more visually conservative, using only some images and very few videos. It feels like Johnson & Johnson should take blog design lessons from GlaxoSmithKline, who should turn around and take blogging lessons from the Johnson & Johnson team.